A Tea Addict's Journal

Well, time’s up. Nothing like a little prize to entice people to post response on this blog, it seems. It’s usually pretty quiet around here. I blame Xanga and hope to move at some point, sooner rather than later.

Anyway, the winner of the little competition is….. Theo. His guess was “the fourth pot has been seasoned the longest/the most, hence its shininess compared with the other pots?”. That is more or less correct, although not 100% spot on in the details. There’s no way he or anybody else would know, however, because the other four pots were just cleaned through intense bleaching of their rather heavy layer of patina/dirt/whatever buildup. I was brewing some puerh that day in pot #4, and have the rest of them drying out after the soaking/cleaning process, and all of a sudden I noticed how much shinier it was than the other ones.

Pot #4 hasn’t always been shiny, however. I can’t quite find the oldest post that features this pot, but I do remember that right after I cleaned it the first time, it was very dull — and I remember feeling somewhat disappointed that it looked so dull. Well, it’s not quite so dull anymore. It’s looking a lot better than it did when it came out of the bath.

This post is somewhat similar, chronicling me cleaning my current young puerh pot.

Anyway, Theo, you should email me your address so I can send you your cup. Email is marshaln at gmail

Thanks for playing!

Well, nobody has the right answer yet, and I think it has mostly to do with the fact that the picture yesterday wasn’t so good. So, I took them again, and here they are, in no particular order. Since Toki asked, why not, let’s throw in a prize. Let’s get that out of the way first.

This is a Japanese Bizen-ware yunomi guinomi that I have, but never used, and would love to send it to somebody who will actually use it. It’s a waste sitting on my shelves, and I have way too many cups as it is. The first person who gets the right answer (if there is one) gets the cup, worldwide. Polls close midnight EST tomorrow.

Here are the five pots again, in no particular order. A short hint — it has nothing to do with size and shape, and none of the theories in the last post are what I had in mind. They are, in fact, valid (i.e. one of them is a decorated pot while the others are all classical shapes, etc). They just aren’t what I was thinking when I first posted it up. Maybe this is an impossible guessing game and it’s all a bit of a waste of time. Anyway, here we go.

Now, enjoy 🙂

Which one does not belong to this group, and why?

I need some advice here. I know the chemists out there might say “lye” while others might say “scrub” and more will say “just ditch it”

Here is the pot in question

With my smaller pot (the one I showed last week) in tow for scale. Upon closer examination, the two pots have rather similar clay. They both fizz when I pour hot water over them, and the colour/texture of the clay are very similar. The smaller pot is a bit darker, but that is most likely a product of me having used it for a lot of tea.

This is by far the biggest pot I own. It has some issues

Minor damages, I think you can say. A chip here, a little crack there. I don’t intend to use this pot much, but I do hope that I will be able to use it occasionally for some black tea… some keemun, for instance. However, there’s one tiny problem

I can’t get rid of this stuff, whatever it is. The white is partially what’s left of the citric acid salt, which will eventually wash away, but underneath that is a very stubborn layer of black stuff that simply won’t disappear. I’ve bleached this pot before. It’s already much cleaner than it was, way back when. The darker shades seems to be some residue of whatever it is that was deposited at the bottom of the pot. I’ve tried scrubbing, with minimal results.

So….. how do I get rid of this rather nasty stuff? Thoughts?

Another pot awaiting a big clean

Yes, it’s very dirty. The pot is covered in stains of some sort or another, and the inside of the pot is filthy

This is, supposedly anyway, a Tiehuaxuan pot from the Republican period. Is it authentic? I can’t say for sure (few things are “for sure” in the teapot world). I can say though the little lion on top of the lid is much better done than most of the other ones I’ve seen. I usually am no fan of this design, but this pot caught my eye.

For the cleaning this time, I’m going to try something new

Yup, you read that right. Let’s see how it turns out.

Since the pot in the last post has generated some interest, I thought I should post some pictures of what’s inside. Let’s start with the lid

If you look at the third picture, you can see evidence of how the whole band of clay was wrapped around. For the entire pot, no effort was made to conceal any of these worksmanship edges — they are all there for you to see.

Same thing for the inside of the pot.

You can see how the edge is not smoothed out. Neither is the joint line

And of course, for a pot like this, only one hole will do

A knowledgable friend said that Yixing pots didn’t start concealing/smoothing out joint lines until the late Qing. Does that make my pot very old? Maybe. It was well used when I bought it (complete with lots of stains — it was very, very dirty). Whatever it is, you’re unlikely to find another pot that looks like this anywhere.

Taking pictures of the inside of a pot is always a difficult thing. You have to have good lights. I don’t have very good lights right now, but maybe I’ll try some more pictures later tomorrow or something.